have derived from such association I am not qualified to pronounce upon.
The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a peculiarly sensitive
and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the genial professor, in
the years which followed, did not frequently consider it necessary to
demonstrate the fact.




LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL

IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt
as a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor
a Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was
a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe,
optimistic way--and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser
singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who
has not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer.

I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since
his death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as
extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in
this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist
may find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for
inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist.
Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than
the composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies,
and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His
chief claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic